Tillamook County, Oregon is cheese country. There are lots and lots of dairy farms in this part of Oregon and there are several establishments that take advantage of this abundance. We stopped at the Blue Heron French Cheese Company on our way north along Route 101 through Tillamook county. There is a petting zoo, which we skipped, and a great shop to check out. Lots of samples of great spreads, jams and even their famous brie, pictured above. I really enjoyed the smoked brie the best. The shop was really fun, they had bicycle shaped pasta and there was French music playing. Very relaxed and laid back.

Our second and final stop in Oregon’s cheese country was at the Tillamook Cheese Factory. There is a self-guided tour of the history of the area’s dairy farms and then you can watch an actual assembly line cut up and package various cheeses to be shipped off to grocery stores. We stood and watched for a few minutes, it was interesting. Then we stopped to sample a few of the cheddar varieties and…

Ice cream! Yep, fantastic locally made ice cream for sale. They have 38 flavors of ice cream. Not too shabby. They have a promotion where you can eat one scoop of each flavor in a massive sundae. Apparently no one has taken them up on their offer. Kind of like Ben and Jerry’s Vermonster, which is fun as long as you’ve got a crowd to share it with.

Kate and I got two scoops - Oregon Strawberry and Chocolate Peanut Butter. It was very tasty. The Oregon Strawberry was my favorite. I don’t usually like strawberry ice cream, it tastes fake to me. This strawberry ice cream had hefty chunks of locally grown Oregon strawberries in it, which were very good. I’ll be looking for this in grocery stores before we leave the west coast, that’s for sure.